Simprints and 'last mile’ fingerprints

The popular conception of fingerprinting often stems from television detective drama, when a perfect print – with clear arches, loops and whorls – emerges from a powder-dusted window to pin the crime on a tricky culprit, perhaps a well-dressed gentleman safecracker. It is TV fiction, after all.

In the real, developing world, fingerprints are usually not so perfect or so clear. So a start-up connected to Cambridge Judge Business School is using advanced technology to make identification possible for even those with far-from-perfect “last-mile” fingerprints.

“Most biometric systems in use today were designed by and for people in high-income countries,” says Toby Norman, co-founder and CEO of Simprints, which is developing biometrics to help identify and reach the 1.1 billion people around the world without formal identification – a technique that can help medical professionals reach, treat and record these needy people. “In fact, many people in developing countries who have laboured with their hands have burns, scars and worn fingerprints that make them far less easy to read.”

Cambridge Global Challenges is a Strategic Research Initiative of the University of Cambridge that aims to enhance the contribution of its research towards addressing global challenges and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030.